A Pulitzer-winning reporter is writing an in-depth piece — about you. What are the three questions you really hope she doesn’t ask you?
What lasting good have you done in the world?
I’ve done no lasting good, it seems.
Why do you now have so few friends?
I still have friends, just in my dreams.
Why are you constantly afraid?
I wish I knew, I cannot say,
Except that I was made this way —
No good I’ve done,
Friendships in flux,
I live in fear,
This interview
Sucks
What’s your most prized possession?
I think about this question:
Facile answers seem self-serving.
I have so many things, it seems;
But for which thing(s) reserving
The highest spot of honor is
Quite difficult, indeed —
For I have all that I might want,
And more than what I need.
Like most, my things become attached
To people in my mind;
Reminding me of times, I didn’t
Want to leave behind
The books of my kids’ childhoods,
The comics of my own;
The snapshots of forgotten days —
With all of these, I’m prone
To live again some bygone time
That means the world to me:
I prize these things because they are
Part of my history.
But on my desk at work, there is
A picture of my dad,
My son and me (my son was six) –
It kind of makes me sad
For it’s the only photo
Of the three of us I’ve got:
It means as much to me
As any ‘thing’ – it means a lot –
For no time is more precious –
Or, in retrospect, as sad –
As knowing now we didn’t know
How little time
We had
The choice to leave is mine, I know.
But somewhere, down inside of me’s
A voice that says, “You’re nothing if
You have no faith – no loyalty –”
It’s strange: inconstant as I am,
I feel no stronger urge than this:
That I must loyal, faithful be,
Although it might seem ludicrous
For men like me, there’s only one,
No medals for it, we’ll receive:
But be the trouble what it may,
We can be left
But we won’t
Leave
(… a prompted post …)
I guess would I say jealousy
Is worry about losing what you have;
As opposed to envy
Which is worry about not having what someone else has
So, I for many years was jealous
If whatever woman I was with
Sparked the interest of another man
Or seemed to spark said interest
My jealousy was
Ugly and uncomfortable and destructive
To these relationships
As frequently, I was merely
Witnessing conversations
That I had read meaning into
Then, I met the woman I am now married to
She doesn’t do jealousy
Doesn’t understand it
Doesn’t countenance it
Because, she says,
“Jealously is all the grief of a loss
Without that loss actually having to happen,
And we choose to experience it
Thinking it can stop the loss from happening.”
So it is a mistake
Both in terms of existence
(The loss hasn’t happened)
And action, as to attempting control someone else
(Controlling or attempting to control others is
Always a mistake in relationships,
At least ones we want to last long-term)
When I realized that
She had chosen to trust me
I realized the folly of jealousy
Not that I haven’t felt worried
About my own adequacy as a husband
But that I know now that
I can live my life
Both trusting
And being worthy of trust
In a movie, who
Would would be most convincing
Having to play me?
I would say Peter Jackson:
No wardrobe changes needed
(.)
Photo credit : © Lucidwaters | Dreamstime.com – The Hobbit Film Photo
it’s two o’clock and i’m awake,
i’ve only slept two hours;
i guess i’ll try the daily prompt
and stretch my blogging powers
the patron saint of something
that’s the thought i must pursue;
some cause i would stand up for, or,
something i like to do –
in all i’ve written here, i see
one subject comes across:
i think, perhaps, i should be
patron saint of love and loss
the patron saint of all who know
just what it is to love,
only to find out in the end
it wasn’t near enough
for love’s a fleeting shadow that
escapes from our embrace;
that vanishes at evening time
and leaves without a trace
it would be better if i wrote
after enough I’d slept —
and best of almost anything
is to have loved and kept
instead of loved and lost, but then –
and you know this is true –
nobody wants to love and lose:
it is just what
we do
In 300 years, if you were to be named the patron saint of X, what would you like X to be? Places, activities, objects — all are fair game.
(Prompt from “The Daily Post“)
My junior year in high school
I skipped a lot, I fear;
And so was failing typing
The last day of the year
My typing teacher asked for help
For she was in a strait;
Her graduation organist
Had to go out of state
I said I’d like to help her
But that I was afraid
That I was on restriction
For one really bad grade
She said, this isn’t normal
The Final grades are cast
But you could take it once again
This time, you might have passed
And so I took my final
Right after school that day
Lo and behold, I passed it
She told me right away
I played at graduation
I sight read everything
From simple “Pomp and Circumstance”
To parts where people’d sing
An hour before, and I was doomed
The whole thing turned around
Because I played the organ and
Somebody else left town
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Express Yourself!.”
I learned to play when I was young,
I have played ever since;
It would not take much time with me
To find the evidence
That music is, within my life,
A refuge, an oasis:
For I still play out publicly
And on a weekly basis
Though often, what I’ll play is merely
An improvisation:
Complete escape into a world
Of solace and sensation
Piano music still is how
I often find a way
To put out into sound what I
Cannot find words to say
And I would advise anyone
From here to Myanmar,
You should – you must – express yourself:
So you’ll know who
You are
In all the world and every time,
We humans think we know it all;
Our self-congratulation’s great,
And thoughts “we might be wrong”, are small
And so we celebrate with joy
The progress that we think we’ve made,
And walk unfeeling past the lost
The beaten and the still afraid
Advice I’d give: to not be so.
Advice I have not as yet taken
As my eyes still are on my road
My confidence in me, unshaken
But does my “truth detector” work?
Is my attention that unswerving?
Or are my actions merely those
Of someone drunk
On words
Self-serving?
(…)
